Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.I climb a slight rise of grass.I do not want to disturb the antsWho are walking single file up the fence post,Carrying small white petals,Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.I close my eyes for a moment, and listen.The old grasshoppersAre tired, they leap heavily now,Their thighs are burdened.I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket beginsIn the maple trees.

From this point onward we become awareOf valleys to the sea. Closed as they areFrom passengers with intent they fly behindLost in their trees. I, myself, beyondEverything fly lost forever lookingOut of my window. Was that you I sawMaking love on the embankment among the daisies?The speed I travel you would not catchMe seeing you. Nor would you be put offWhat you were doing. You fly away behindBeyond two bridges into the summer day.

How much verse is magnificent?Point oh oh oh oh one per cent.How much poetry is second-rate?Around point oh oh oh oh eight.How much verse is a botched hotch potch?Ninety-eight per cent by my watch.How much poetry simply bores?None of mine and all of yours.

***

There are too many of us

Most poets are bad poets, the poor creatures.Much worse than that: most teachers are bad teachers.

A book is a life, and thisWhite paper death,I roll it on the drum and write,Rum-courage on my breath.The truth is no less hardThan it was years ago,Than what Catullus, Villon heard,Each word,Black footprints in the blackening snow.

Go, burning sighs, unto the frozen heart,Go break the ice which pity's painful dartMight never pierce; and if mortal prayerIn heaven may be heard, at least yet I desireThat death or mercy be end of my smart.Take with thee pain whereof I have my part,And eke the flame from which I cannot start,And leave me then in rest I you require.Go, burning sighs.

I must go work I see by craft and art,For truth and faith in her is laid apart.Alas, I cannot therefore assail her,With pitiful complaint and scalding fire,That from my breast doth strainably start.Go, burning sighs.

like a ship the shape of flightor like the weight that keeps it uprightor like a skyline crossed by breathor like the planking bent beneathor like a glint or like a gustor like the lofting of a mast

such am I who flits and flowsand seeks and swerves and swiftly goes -the ship sets sail, the weight is thrown,the skyline shifts, the planks groan,the glint glides, the gust shiversthe mast sways and so does water

then like a wave the flesh of windor like the flow-veins on the sandor like the inkling of a fishor like the phases of a splashor like an eye or like a boneor like a sandflea on a stone

such am I who flits and flowsand seeks and swerves and swiftly goes -the wave slides in, the sand lifts,the fish fades, the splash drifts,the eye blinks, the bone shatters,the sandflea jumps and so does water

Legend, a drop of dewcupped in the morning leafnot true and not untruelegend before beliefshepherd and youngest songiantkiller and skald- am I then anyone -the roles join, interfoldand firm up as a gistthat moving out of mistslips with an only treadinto the self ahead

I step with light precisionstill ruddy like dawn cloudthe shepherd with the slingto face a crazy king

joined in the palimpsestof crisscross gratitude,and God, and circumcision

Tough with the innocenceyou call luck, I the Lord

And though the king has hurledhis javelin at me

I have his son's love, whenceI learn the mixed demandI hardly can affordof jostling with the world

Guinea Corn, I long to see youGuinea Corn, I long to plant youGuinea Corn, I long to mould youGuinea Corn, I long to weed youGuinea Corn, I long to hoe youGuinea Corn, I long to top youGuinea Corn, I long to cut youGuinea Corn, I long to dry youGuinea Corn, I long to beat youGuinea Corn, I long to trash youGuinea Corn, I long to parch youGuinea Corn, I long to grind youGuinea Corn, I long to turn youGuinea Corn, I long to eat you.

I am two fools, I know,For loving, and for saying soIn whining poetry ;But where's that wise man, that would not be I,If she would not deny?Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanesDo purge sea water's fretful salt away,I thought, if I could draw my painsThrough rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,Some man, his art and voice to show,Doth set and sing my pain ;And, by delighting many, frees againGrief, which verse did restrain.To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.Both are increasèd by such songs,For both their triumphs so are published,And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

Whilst making love a necklace broke.A row of pearls mislaid.One sixth fell to the floor.One fifth upon the bed.The young woman saved one third of them.One tenth were caught by her lover.If six pearls remained upon the stringHow many pearls were there altogether?

I shall recall a single incidentNo more. I spoke of mining engineeringAs the career on which my mind was bent,But for some time my fancies had been veering;Mirages of the future kept appearing;Crazes had come and gone in short, sharp gales,For motor-bikes, photography, and whales.

But indecision broke off with a clean-cut endOne afternoon in March at half-past threeWhen walking in a ploughed field with a friendKicking a little stone, he turned to meAnd said, "Tell me, do you write poetry?"I never had, and said so, but I knewThat very moment what I wished to do.

he found it and he sucked itduring the war.He found it and he sucked itwhen they ran out of water.He found it and he sucked itwhen they were dying for a drink.And he sucked it and he sucked itfor days and days and days.

I know a man who's got a pebbleand he keeps it in his drawer.

It's small and brown - nothing much to look atbut I think of the things he thinkswhen he sees it:how he found ithow he sucked ithow he nearly died for water to drink.

A small brown pebbletucked under his tongueand he keeps it in his drawerto look at now and then.

This is not exactly what I meanAny more than the sun is the sun.But how to mean more closelyIf the sun shines but approximately?What a world of awkwardness!What hostile implements of sense!Perhaps this is as close a meaningAs perhaps becomes such knowing.Else I think the world and IMust live together as strangers and die -A sour love, each doubtful whetherWas ever a thing to love the other.No, better for both to be nearly sureEach of each - exactly whereExactly I and exactly the worldFail to meet by a moment, and a word.

My dearest dust, could not thy hasty dayAfford thy drowsy patience leave to stayOne hour longer: so that we might eitherSit up, or gone to bed together?But since thy finished labour hath possessedThy weary limbs with early rest,Enjoy it sweetly, and thy widow brideShall soon repose her by thy slumbering side,Whose business now is only to prepareMy nightly dress and call to prayer.Mine eyes wax heavy, and the day grows old,The dew falls thick, my blood grows cold,Draw, draw the closed curtains and make room,My dear, my dearest dust, I come, I come.

None of those once known is disknown, hidden, lost, I see them in clouds in streets in treesOften and often, or in dreams, or if I feel I ought to be at my easeThey prod and probe: ‘When my head was on your kneesAnd your hand was on my head, did you think time would seizeHead, hand, all, lock all away where there is no ring of keys - ?’xxxxxxxxxxI did not, oh I did not,xxxxxxxxxxBut look what I have got,Frame of a moment made for friendless friendly time to freeze.

***

G.

‘Ah canny say Ah love ye but.’ ‘I know, that’s all right, it’s all right.’‘Ah love ma wife an ma weans. Ah don’t go aroon thinking aboot you day an night.Ah wahnt tae come in yir mooth, an see thee teeth a yours – see they don’t bite!Ah like ye right enough, but aw that lovey-dovey stuff is pure shite.Ah widny kiss ye, God no.’ But kiss me he did one afternoon. with a drink in him, at Central Station, on the lips, in broad daylight.xxxxxxxxxxIt will not be deniedxxxxxxxxxxIn this life. It is a flood-tide.You may dam with all your language but it breaks and bullers through and blatters all platitudes and protestations before it, clean out of sight.

***

Absence

Love is the most mysterious of the winds that blow.As you lie alone it batters with sleeplessness at the winter bedroom window.The friend is absent, the streetlamp shivers desolately to and fro.Your prostate makes you get up, you look out, police car and ambulance howl and flash as they matter-of-factly come and go.There is pain and danger down there, greater than the pain you knowxxxxxxxxxxBut it is pain all the samexxxxxxxxxxAs you breathe the absent nameOf one who is bonded to you beyond blizzards, time-zones, sickness, black stars, snow.

I saw peopleThronging the streetsWhere the Eastway with the oldRoman Wall meets -But none though of oldGloucester blood brought,Loved so the CityAs I - the poet unthought.And I exulted thereTo think that but oneOf all that CityHad pride or equityEnough for the marvellingAt street and stone,Or the age of Briton,Dane, Roman, Elizabethan -One grateful one - true childOf that dear City - one worthy one.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into the living sea of waking dreams,Where there is neither sense of life or joys,But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteem:Even the dearest that I love the bestAre strange-nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trodA place where woman never smiled or weptthere to abide with my creator God,And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,Untroubling and untroubled where I lieThe grass below, above, the vaulted sky.

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,How hot the scent is of the summer rose,How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by,

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,And speech, to dull the roses's cruel scent,We spell away the overhanging night,We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a cool web of language winds us in,Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:We grow sea-green at last and coldly dieIn brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,Throwing off language and its watery claspBefore our death, instead of when death comes,Facing the wide glare of the children's day,Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,We shall go mad, no doubt, and die that way.

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-xxxxdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his

riding

xxxxOf the rolling level underneath him steady air, and stridingHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wingIn his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,xxxxAs a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and

gliding

xxxxRebuffed the big wind. My heart in hidingStirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;

A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves overFollowing a faint stain on the air to the river's edgeI enter water. Who am I to splitThe glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bedOf the river above me upside down very clearWhat am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I findthis frog so interesting as I inspect its most secretinterior and make it my own? Do these weedsknow me and name me to each other have theyseen me before do I fit in their world? I seemseparate from the ground and not rooted but droppedout of nothing casually I've no threadsfastening me to anything I can go anywhereI seem to have been given the freedomof this place what am I then? And pickingbits of bark off this rotten stump gives meno pleasure and it's no use so why do I do itme and doing that have coincided very queerlyBut what shall I be called am I the firsthave I an owner what shape am I whatshape am I am I huge if I goto the end on this way past these trees and past these treestill I get tired that's touching one wall of mefor the moment if I sit still how everythingstops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centrebut there's all this what is it rootsroots roots roots and here's the wateragain very queer but I'll go on looking

There was a road ran past our houseToo lovely to explore.I asked my mother once -- she saidThat if you followed where it ledIt brought you to the milk-man's door.(That's why I have not travelled more.)

one. May I for my own self song's truth reckon,Journey's jargon, how I in harsh daysHardship endured oft...

trans. by Ezra Pound

two.I can sing a true song about myself,tell of my travels, how in the days of tribulationI often endured a time of hardship...trans. by Kevin Crossley-Hollandthree.This verse is my voice, it is no fable,I tell of my travelling, how in hardshipI have often suffered laborious days...trans. by Edwin Morganoriginal.Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan,siþas secgan, hu ic geswincdagumearfoðhwile oft þrowade...

Follow, followe,Through with mischiefeArm'd, like whirlewind,Now she flyes thee;Time can conquerLoves unkindnes;Love can alterTimes disgraces;Till death faint notThen, but followe.Could I catch thatNimble trayter,Skornefull Lawra,Swift foote Lawra,Soone that would Iseeke avengement?Even submisselyProstrate then toBeg for mercye.

Fine Madame Would-Be, wherefore should you feare,That love to make so well, a child to beare?The world reputes you barren; but I knowYour 'pothecarie, and his drug sayes no.Is it the paine affrights? That's soone forgot.Or your complexion's losse? You have a potThat can restore that. Will it hurt your feature?To make amends, yo'are thought a wholesome creature.What should the cause be? Oh, you live at court,And there's both losse of time and losse of sportIn a great belly. Write, then, on thy wombe,Of the not borne, yet buried, here's the tombe.

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrustA mountain down and down.Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,It's silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.My lungs say No;But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish isThis stone, that tuft, this stoneAnd the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.I claw that tall horizon down to this;And suddenlyMy shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planetwhen larks rose on long thin strings of singingand the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.Greenness entered the body. The grassesshivered with presences and sunlightstayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'cried I, like a sunstruck madman.And what did she have to say for it?Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their gravesas she spoke with their ancient misery:'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it!'

My mother's old leather handbag,crowded with letters she carriedall through the war. The smellof my mother's handbag: mintsand liptsick and Coty powder.The look of those letters, softenedand worn at the edges, opened,read, and refolded so often.Letters from my father. Odourof leather and powder, which eversince then has meant womanliness,and love, and anguish, and war.

I was no tree walking.I was still. They ignored me,the birds, the migrantson their way south. They re-leafedthe trees, budding themwith their notes. They filtered throughthe boughs like sunlight,looked at me from three feetoff, their eyes blackberry bright.,not seeing me, not detaching mefrom the withies, where I wascaged and they free.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThey would have perchedon me, had I nourishmentin my fissures. As it wasthey netted me in their shadows,brushed me with sound, feathering the arrowsof their own bows, and were gone,leaving me to reflect on the answerto a question I had not asked.'A repetition in time of the eternalI AM.' Say it. Don't be shy.Escape from your mortal cagein thought. Your migrations will neverbe over. Between two truthsthere is only the mind to fly with.Navigate by such stars as are notleaves falling from life'sdeciduous tree, but spray from the fountainof the imagination, endlesslyreplenishing itself out of its own waters.

When you go,if you go,And I should want to die,there's nothing I'd be saved bymore than the timeyou fell asleep in my armsin a trust so gentleI let the darkening roomdrink up the evening, tillrest, or the new rainlightly roused you awake.I asked if you heard the rain in your dreamand half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

When horsemen at the inn-yards say'Return to her'I stay beside the barrel, drinking.When the old women urge,'Bring her a gift of fish'I take nothing but hunger into your house.When the elders insist'Break bread together'You are the witch in the flame, I the fiddler,At the gate of loaves and fishes.Each Sabbath silenceOur tree is crammed with birds,And when the villages danceThen we lie quiet all night with mixed hair.

"Silly old Owl! Doesn't he know,There's no such thing as a gruffal...?"

...OH!"

But who is this creature with terrible clawsAnd terrible teeth in his terrible jaws?He has knobbly knees, and turned-out toes,And a poisonous wart at the end of his nose.His eyes are orange, his tongue is black,He has purple prickles all over his back.

"Oh help! Oh no!It's a gruffalo!"

"My favourite food!" the Gruffalo said."You'll taste good on a slice of bread!"

"Good?" said the mouse. "Don't call me good!I'm the scariest creature in this wood.Just walk behind me and soon you'll see,Everyone is afraid of me."

Dinogad's speckled petticoatwas made of skins of speckled stoat:whip whip whipalongeight times we'll sing the song.When your father hunted the landspear on shoulder club in handthus his speedy dogs he'd teachGiff Gaff catch her catch her fetch!In his coracle he'd slayfish as a lion does its prey.When your father went to the moorhe'd bring back heads of stag fawn boarthe speckled grouse's head from the mountainfishes' heads from the falls of Oak fountainWhatever your father struck with his spearwild pig wild cat fox from his lairnumless it had wings it would never get clear.

The Duchess of Mecklenburg straightens her back,surveys her fellow enthusiasts,all digging in soft Salzkammergut rain.She swaps her mattock for a favourite pick,glances up at the Hallstatt peakthen, rested, tackles the grave again.

He’s close. She can smell him. With trembling hands,she sorts bone splinters and pottery shards,sets them aside with the Celtic coins.She drops to her knees, forgetting her crew,scrambles then gives a triumphant cryas she touches his chest, his barbarian loins.

The Duchess of Mecklenburg, an eminent archaeologist, was one of those responsible for excavating the Celtic salt mines in Hallstatt, Austria, at the turn of this century.

The green paths down the hillside are channels for streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of water running between the ridges, the sheep are gathered together on the slopes.

After the wet dark days, the country seems more populous. It peoples itself in the sunbeams.

The garden, mimic of spring, is gay with flowers. The purple-starred hepatica spreads itself in the sun, and the clustering snow-drops put forth their white heads, at first upright, ribbed with green, and like a rose bud when completely opened, hanging their heads downwards, but slowly lengthening their slender stems.

The slanting woods of an unvarying brown, showing the light through the thin net-work of their upper boughs.

Upon the highest ridge of that round hill covered with planted oaks, the shafts of the trees show in the light like the columns of a ruin.

from the Alfoxden Journal (Note: all paragraph breaks are mine.)(to Contents)

On stern Blencartha's perilous heightThe winds are tyrannous and strong;And flashing forth unsteady lightFrom stern Blencartha's skiey height,As loud the torrents throng!Beneath the moon in gentle weather,They bind earth and sky together.But oh! the sky and all its forms, how quiet!The things that seek the earth, how full of noise and riot!

Therefore he no more troubled the pool of silence.But put on mask and cloak,Strung a guitarAnd moved among the folk.Dancing they cried,'Ah, how our sober islandsAre gay again, since the blind lyrical trampInvaded the Fair!'

Under the last dead lampWhen all the dancers and masks had gone insideHis cold stareReturned to its true task, interrogation of silence.

Remarking, 'It is not my tasteTo Wheeze on a white pillowNor to toil gravewards on a stick, murdered slowlyBy avarice, envy, lust,'Einar ran where the swords fell thickest.

An Irish axeStruck the right shoulder of Sweyn the skald.'In future,' said Sweyn,'I will write my poems with the left hand.I will sup a sinister broth.'

Near the end of the battleRolf returned to the ship, downcast.'Gudrun,' he said, 'is a proud woman.She will not bed with boys.Hard wounds I soughtFor thigh and chest and forehead today.All I have gotIs a broken tooth, an eye as blue as an oyster,And my pinkie scratched.From now on, Gudrun,I will court less particular girls.'

I'm thinking of you. What else can I say?The palm trees on the reverseare a delusion; so is the pink sand.What we have are the usualfractured coke bottles and the smellof backed-up drains, too sweet,like a mango on the vergeof rot, which we have also.The air clear sweat, mosquitos& their tracks; birds, blue & elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a sickness, oneday after the other rolling on;I move up, its calledawake, then down into the uneasynights but neverforward. The roosters crowfor hours before dawn, and a proddedchild howls & howlson the pocked road to school.In the hold with the baggagethere are two prisoners,their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten cratesof queasy chicks. Each springthere's a race of cripples, from the storeto the church. This is the sort of junkI carry with me; and a clippingabout democracy from the local paper.Outside the windowthey're building the damn hotel,nail by nail, someone'scrumbling dream. A universe that includes youcan't be all bad, butdoes it? At this distanceyou're a mirage, a glossy imagefixed in the postureof the last time i saw you.Turn you over, there's the placefor the address. Wish you werehere. Love comesin waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on& on, a hollow cavein the head, filling and pounding, a kicked ear.

Dearest Evelyn, I often think of youOut with the guns in the jungle stewYesterday I hittapotamusI put the measurements down for you but they got lost in the fussIt's not a good thing to drink out hereYou know, I've practically given it up dear.Tomorrow I am going alone a long wayInto the jungle. It is all greyBut green on topOnly sometimes when a tree has fallenThe sun comes down plop, it is quite appalling.You never want to go in a jungle poolIn the hot sun, it would be the act of a foolBecause it's always full of anacondas, Evelyn, not looking ill-fedI'll say. So no more now, from your loving husband Wilfred.

The same can be said of you, Victiusas of any open mouthed borexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsuffering from halitosis.With that tongue of yours one can actually credityour licking, at will, besmeared boots and buttocks.If you wish to prostrate the company –xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxgape:you will effectively accomplish your purpose.

***

To Vicitus the Stinkard - Catullus (trans. Richard Burton)

Rightly of thee may be said, an of any, (thou stinkingest Victius!)Whatso wont we to say touching the praters and prigs.Thou wi' that tongue o' thine own, if granted occasion availestBrogues of the cowherds to kiss, also their . . . .Wouldst thou undo us all with a thorough undoing (o Victius!)Open thy gape -thereby all shall be wholly undone.

She is struggling through grass-mesh - not flying,Her wide-winged, stiff, weightless basket-work of limbsRocking, like an antique wain, a top-heavy ceremonial cartAcross mountain summits(Not planing over water, dipping her tail)But blundering with long strides, long reachings, reelingsAnd ginger-glistening wingsFrom collision to collision.Aimless in no particular direction,Just exerting her last to escape out of the overwhelmingOf whatever it is, legs, grass,The garden, the county, the country, the world -

Sometimes she rests long minutes in the grass forestLike a fairytale hero, only a marvel can help her.She cannot fathom the mystery of this forestIn which, for instance, this giant watches -The giant who knows she cannot be helped in any way.

Her jointed bamboo fuselage,Her lobster shoulders, and her faceLike a pinhead dragon, with its tender moustache,And the simple colourless church windows of her wingsWill come to an end, in mid-search, quite soon.Everything about her, every perfected vestmentIs already superfluous.The monstrous excess of her legs and curly feetAre a problem beyond her.The calculus of glucose and chitin inadequateTo plot her through the infinities of the stems.

The frayed apple leaves, the grunting raven, the defunct tractorSunk in nettles, wait with their multiplicationsLike other galaxies.The sky’s Northward September procession, the vastsoft armistice,Like an Empire on the move,Abandons her, tinily embattledWith her cumbering limbs and cumbered brain.

Inside Ayers Rock is litwith paired fluorescent lightson steel pillars supporting the ceilingof haze-blue marquee clothhigh above the non-slip pavers.Curving around the cafeteriathroughout vast inner spaceis a Milky way of plastic chairsin foursomes around tablesall the way to the truck drivers' enclave.Dusted coolabah trees grow to the ceiling,TVs talk in gassy colours, andround the walls are Outback shop fronts:the Beehive Bookshop for brochures,Casual Clobber, the bottled Country Kitchenand the sheet-iron Dreamtime Experiencethat is turned off at night.A high bank of medal-ribbonylolly jars preside overisland counters like opened crates,one labelled White Mugs, and covered with them.A two-dimensional policemandiscourages shoplifting of giftsand near the entrance, where you payfor fuel, there stands a tribal manin rib-paint and pubic tassel.It is all gentle and kind.In beyond the children's playworldthere are fossils, like crumpledold drawings of creatures in rock.